Slayin’ Creator Announces Roguelike Treasure Buster

If someone were to lock me in a room, promising to release me only if I made a definitive “Top 100 Games on the App Store” list, 2013’s Slayin’ would rank pretty high on said list. It was a unique single-screen action game with a roguelike twist, and I found myself glued to it for months.

Slayin’s creator, Pixel Licker, has just announced that they’re partnering with publisher FDG Entertainment again to release their next mobile title into the wild: the pull-and-shoot dungeon crawler Treasure Buster.

With the exception of a gameplay trailer (see above), few details have emerged about Treasure Buster as of yet. Pixel Licker described the game in a recent blog post thusly:

It is kind of a mix of Zelda 1 and pinball, wrapped in the veneer of early 90’s arcade games from companies like Capcom and Psikyo.

While they’re quick to use the word pinball, Treasure Buster seems to draw from another inspiration — and it’s one that few people in the West care about: Monster Strike. One of the most profitable mobile games of all time thanks to its success in Asia, the marble-shooting nature of Monster Strike has been attempted countless times in the West, but has failed to make significant traction. Even Supercell (the studio behind Clash of Clans) experimented with the idea before ultimately bowing out of the genre.

Maybe what’s needed is a fresh approach. Putting an indie like Pixel Licker on it instead of a major studio could be just what the doctor ordered. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

While there’s no word on a Treasure Buster release date yet, we’re hoping there won’t be too long to wait. Expect to see Treasure Buster on both the App Store and Google Play.